Omar Brown and Camille Holder-Brown, owners of Kale Cafe Juice Bar & Vegan Cuisine, hold the first two bottles of their Judah's salad dressing and marinade, at Stage Coach Sauces in Daytona Beach, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020.

DAYTONA BEACH — Camille Holder-Brown and Omar Brown, restaurant owners tackling the taboo associated with vegan cuisine, built their restaurant, Kale Cafe Juice Bar & Vegan Cuisine, on the premise of serving and educating the community.

“Our goal is to get the community healthy by helping to change their eating habits and food consumption,” said Omar Brown, 48.

Kale Cafe Juice Bar & Vegan Cuisine is located in Daytona Beach at 116 N. Beach St.

Camille Holder-Brown said there’s so much that people don’t know when considering the vegan route.

“We offer a healthy option for our community,” said Holder-Brown, 41. “We let people know they don’t have to sacrifice flavor. People are always so surprised that our food tastes good. They think it’s going to taste like grass clippings.”

Before branching out into the restaurant industry, Holder-Brown spent nine years as a filmmaker while Brown worked as a computer network engineer for 15 years.

The couple moved to Daytona Beach from New York in 2011. They have six children together.

Omar Brown and Camille Holder-Brown own Kale Cafe Juice Bar & Vegan Cuisine in Daytona Beach.

Answering a call

“We started it in November of 2013 actually under a different name,” said Holder-Brown. “And then in April of 2014 we switched the name to Kale Cafe. We started as a nonprofit initially called Midtown Eco Village.”

Holder-Brown said the nonprofit was geared toward educating people about healthy eating.

“When we moved from New York, we noticed that there were a lot of people who didn’t know what tofu was,” she said. “There was nothing healthy to eat. So we started volunteering a lot. We started the mayor’s backpack giveaway, giving out free smoothies. After that, the community embraced it and we just kept growing from there.”

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